Do any one still sign off

[secondchoice]

I know this station was a daytimer in the early 1970s and really doesn't count in this category but WHIN use to sign offplaying "The Stripper".

Unless your station is in a really high electric rate area, with PC based automation has killed the need to sign off at night.

 

[davideduardo]

Unless your station is in a really high electric rate area, with PC based automation has killed the need to sign off at night.

And many of us discovered, back in the 60's that there was a risk of "cold" equipment failing at 6 AM sign on-time, so it was better to remain on the air all the time.

One thing that amazed me was that transmitters with vacuum tubes did not separately power the fans and ventilation. The rigs I built had a fan-on switch that could not be turned off until the plate, then filaments were off and the instructions were to leave it on at least a minute afterwards. In the event of the 100 or so power failures a year we had, I had the fans on an equivalent of a UPS: car batteries powered them and the batteries charged when the transmitter was on mains power.

 

[secondchoice]

And many of us discovered, back in the 60's that there was a risk of "cold" equipment failing at 6 AM sign on-time, so it was better to remain on the air all the time.

One thing that amazed me was that transmitters with vacuum tubes did not separately power the fans and ventilation. The rigs I built had a fan-on switch that could not be turned off until the plate, then filaments were off and the instructions were to leave it on at least a minute afterwards. In the event of the 100 or so power failures a year we had, I had the fans on an equivalent of a UPS: car batteries powered them and the batteries charged when the transmitter was on mains power.

I overslept one morning and only had less than 5 minutes for filament warm up. Thankfully we were in a pre sunrise month and the good old Collins transmitter worked even with short warm-up. They had a procedure that if there was a long (5 or minutes) power failure during the day, you would run the filaments for 5 minutes then come back on at 500 watt PSA for at least 10 minutes then back up to 1kw.

 

[Mike Sheridan]

I know this station was a daytimer in the early 1970s and really doesn't count in this category but WHIN use to sign offplaying "The Stripper".

Unless your station is in a really high electric rate area, with PC based automation has killed the need to sign off at night.

Some AM stations are still only authorized for daytime operation.

 

[SarahB98]

Back to the subject, a Minnesota LP FM station still signs off

 

[SarahB98]

Some AM stations are still only authorized for daytime operation.

Yes, but i’m referencing to full time stations

 

[Voicetrack of Reason]

I forgot to mention a staticky KVSH sign off had already existed on archive dot org

Thanks 👍 I will have to check it out. What kind of receiver are you using for DXing?

 

[Gregg.]

I remember when both WABC and WNBC in New York used to sign off on early Mondays for transmitter maintenance. Usually they came back on the air at 4 or 4:30, making sure to give a lead-in to the morning host at 6 a.m. I guess one Monday the repairs ran late on WNBC. I remember weekender/swing DJ Scott Bingham was assigned to do that early Monday shift.

At 5 a.m., WNBC simply started playing a song. Bingham came on saying "WNBC New York, where you have a chance to win $1000 later today in the such-and-such contest." I was amazed. No national anthem, no pre-recorded explanation of the National Broadcasting Company or 50,000 watts or by authority of the Federal Communications Commission.

He simply gave the legal I.D. and then launched into a promo over a song intro. It was as if we had been listening all along and the station hadn't been off the air for the last three hours.

 

[secondchoice]

If the transmitter is at remote location usually you play music and "listen" to the on air monitor. Once you hear you music what ever the issue was is fixed. The station ID is all you need.

 

[davideduardo]

If the transmitter is at remote location usually you play music and "listen" to the on air monitor. Once you hear you music what ever the issue was is fixed. The station ID is all you need.

At both stations I have owned and ones I have managed or programmed, the rule was to do everything as normal if the station went off the air: notify the engineer, maybe the PD and manager, and do everything on the log... just mark the start and end times of the incident.

I had too many incidents where the jock did not realize the station was back on the air, so additional time was lost getting the word to them. Or, even, when the station was really on the air but someone hit a switch for the air monitor input making the jock think they were off.

 

[fybush]

"Off the air" is a complicated concept these days. When I'm at the board at WXXI, the programming I'm producing is running over as many as five transmitters (one AM, three FMs, one HD2 on a fourth FM), as well as several streaming feeds.

So even if one of those transmitters goes down, the programming has to continue for listeners who are tuned in via other transmitters or streaming. If it's a planned maintenance outage, we'll make an announcement and let listeners know where else to tune. If it's something sudden, we'll try to let listeners know over the other signals as quickly as possible.

 

[davideduardo]

If it's something sudden, we'll try to let listeners know over the other signals as quickly as possible.

I had a night jock on WQII back in the 70's who could not be trained NOT to say "we are sorry we are off the air" on those rare occasions when we were actually off the air and we'd catch that announcement on the aircheck cassette for each show! This was not a guy who might be a candidate for a doctorate in physics!

 

[newsmark]

I had a night jock on WQII back in the 70's who could not be trained NOT to say "we are sorry we are off the air" on those rare occasions when we were actually off the air and we'd catch that announcement on the aircheck cassette for each show! This was not a guy who might be a candidate for a doctorate in physics!

Kinda like when someone sends a company-wide email to tell everyone the email server is down?

 

[kevtronics]

I kinda did it myself as a listener, when I called a radio station to ask if they were off the air, knowing full well that they were indeed off the air. But I wanted to be more polite than telling them "hey, you're off the air!" The station owner picked up the phone and said a tree fell on the power line going to the transmitter.

 

[DaveBayArea]

I kinda did it myself as a listener, when I called a radio station to ask if they were off the air, knowing full well that they were indeed off the air. But I wanted to be more polite than telling them "hey, you're off the air!" The station owner picked up the phone and said a tree fell on the power line going to the transmitter.

Because of HD, encoding delays, profanity delays, etc. it's impossible to monitor the off-air directly in the studio. Depending on the settings of a silence sensor (if the station has one) that phone call might be the first indication of a problem to the programmer on duty.

Dave B.

 

[Kent]

So even if one of those transmitters goes down, the programming has to continue for listeners who are tuned in via other transmitters or streaming. If it's a planned maintenance outage, we'll make an announcement and let listeners know where else to tune. If it's something sudden, we'll try to let listeners know over the other signals as quickly as possible.

More than 20 years ago, I was on-air during a severe thunderstorm and several tornado warnings. Two of our stations were on the same tower, and that tower took a direct lightning strike. It fried everything and even melted the transmitter phone. I was quick to tell people if they were looking for our news/talk AM or trying to find our country FM that they could still be heard online. Streaming wasn't hugely popular then, but those stations were able to continue as they always while getting backup transmitters set up. Also, at the time, those stations were automated and voicetracked other than when the meteorologist or I would break in for weather coverage, but we continued running as though the transmitter was on-air.

Because of HD, encoding delays, profanity delays, etc. it's impossible to monitor the off-air directly in the studio. Depending on the settings of a silence sensor (if the station has one) that phone call might be the first indication of a problem to the programmer on duty.

I don't know how much this has changed since HD Radio, but every station I have worked at that has had as silence sensor has monitored the studio, not the transmitter. I know we were always trained to monitor the air signal in the studio instead of the program channel, and that might not be something that can be done now with the digital delays. I once asked why we didn't have any silence senors on the transmitters and was told the transmitters were the most reliable products we had. The computers in the studio, the satellites, and the switchers were far more likely to go down than the transmitters. Plus, transmitters were supposed to be monitored every two to three hours while the stations were attended. So, if anything was about to happen, we'd most likely catch it with enough time to alert someone as transmitters rarely failed without notice (lightning strikes and natural disasters not withstanding). We did once fire someone for not monitoring the transmitters after the STL for one of the stations crashed. Luckily, that occurred in the overnight hours when few people were listening and paid spots were few and far between.